Movies about the same thing should not have the same title

Every time I see a movie that has the same title as another movie, I cringe a little bit. 

I know there are a finite number of words in the English language and I know that there are some titles that are too good to belong solely to the movie that happened to use the title first. But I don't love it. Not only do I now have to use a year in parentheses any time I include the movie in one of my lists, but I have to go back and retroactively add parentheses to the other movie to distinguish it from the new one.

I get it, though, in instances where the movies have nothing to do with each other. If talking about the two different versions of Frozen, you aren't likely going to confuse the one about magical ice princesses and the one where two people are in danger of freezing to death on a ski lift, with hungry wolves circling below. (And though Disney's Frozen has obviously become the far better known film, it was not the first of these two -- and when I heard the title of Disney's movie, I did feel the aforementioned annoyance because I already had the ski lift movie in my lists.)

Remakes are another scenario where it's okay. To use a recent example, I wouldn't expect them to call the remake of Road House anything other than Road House. You will need the parentheses, but you can easily distinguish them in casual conversation by saying "the original" or "the remake." (Now, if they remake it multiple times, like A Star is Born, then you have to start saying things like "the Judy Garland version," but I still would not expect them to come up with a new title.)

The one that kind of gives me the shits is using the title Frida to refer to two movies about Frida Kahlo, the more recent of which is not a remake of the first -- even if both movies are quite good.

Last night I watched Carla Gutierrez' new documentary on Amazon Prime, which uses the words from Kahlo's diaries and interviews to narrate her life, and animation of her paintings as the stand-out gimmick to accompany old photos and film footage. It's one of my favorite movies of the young 2024.

But there was also a 2002 biopic of Kahlo called Frida, directed by Julie Taymor and starring Salma Hayek and Alfred Molina. 

I get that Kahlo is not a good title for a movie. But since it is the painter in her own words, what about I, Frida? Or Yo, Frida? (I guess that last might sound like you were yelling at someone. "Yo! Frida!")

Also I know this is a little bit of a flawed distinction to be making about the relative difficulty of distinguishing between the movies. If you can say "the Frozen about the stranded skiers" or "the original Road House" you can certainly say "Frida the biopic" or "Frida the documentary."

And here's something interesting to note: When I added the movie to Letterboxd just now, movies named Frida from 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2022 all also came up as options. I didn't check them to see if they were also movies about Frida Kahlo, but what else would they be? Whether this makes Gutierrez' reuse of the title more or less acceptable is, I suppose, a matter of perspective. 

I do hope a lot of us will be making this distinction, because not only is this already a contender for my top ten of 2024, but it also breathes some much-needed life into the documentary format, which has not been wowing me in recent years with a lot of outside-the-box examples. 

And having been reminded of the trajectory of Kahlo's life in a way that's in conversation with her art, Loving Vincent-style, I am now inclined to revisit Taymor's film as well. 

Potentially a lot of Frida's in my immediate past and near future. 

Frozen (not even) 2 (stars)

Taking a quick break from my hotel (really, motel) weekend movie marathon. I'm getting so many idea of things to write about in the movies I've seen, I thought I'd get some of them down, especially as I wait for my brunch to arrive.

I thought Frozen II would be a good movie to show what my new projector can really do. I always find that animation looks especially good when projected on a wall, so even if the movie were not good, it'd be a treat for my eyeballs at the very least.

Well, the movie was not good.

Now I should say, I was not a huge fan of the first Frozen. I gave it 3.5 stars out of five, but I now think my feelings toward it are a little closer to a three. And since I often find myself defending the vastly superior Tangled against it, it tends to drive those feelings of comparative dislike, maybe even down to something like 2.5 stars.

Still, I had planned to see the sequel in the theater when it opened last year. I had a good opportunity on the morning I arrived in Tasmania after a ferry ride overnight, when we were going down there for Christmas. I didn't have any other family members with me (my kids were not interested in the movie anyway) and I didn't have anywhere to be until the next day. But I succumbed to the desire to see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker a second time, rather than Frozen II a first.

Good decision.

This film is a mess. At any given time I did not understand the point of the plot or what its real thrust was supposed to be. The plot, such as it is, screamed of resulting from a bunch of writers sitting in a writing room, knowing they needed to cobble together something credible in this enchanted and ice-encrusted world, because the eight-year-old girls would demand it, but really, having no driving force to tell any particular story themselves.

This narrative slackness is borne out in the songs in particular. Not a single song in this movie is derived from the action. People start singing because they are, mathematically, at a segment of the plot where a song is required. Perhaps the worst example of this, in a character I find incredibly annoying, is when Josh Gad's Olaf sings a song called "When I Am Older." The whole point is that the situation he's in right now -- not that strange in terms of this world, but strange enough for him I guess -- will make more sense to him when he's older. The thing is, he's like the fifth most important character in this film, and he has no agency at all -- everything just happens to him. Why do we care what does or doesn't make sense to him? Oh that's right -- Olaf has to have a song, that's why. Every other song is either an "I'm looking ahead to the great unknown" (that's almost exactly the title of the song) song or a "I'm at my lowest moment" song. How many "lowest moments" can one film have?

Not that these things really matter that much, but I noticed that Elsa's powers can basically be summarized as "whatever the plot requires at the moment." The big climax doesn't even really register because of course she could do what she does -- why not?

I did notice an interesting thing, speaking of Tangled. There were at least two moments that I thought were direct references to that film. There's a little chameleon-like creature in the "enchanted forest" that is basically supposed to serve the same function as Pascal in Tangled, and even looks a lot like him. Then Rider is the name of one of the new characters we meet -- as in Flynn Rider from Tangled. It's almost like this movie's writers themselves realized that Tangled is the better movie, and a better source from which to steal than the original Frozen.

I could certainly go on about my dislike for this movie but I suspect my brunch will be arriving shortly, at which point typing will become much more difficult.

So I'll just close out by saying yes, Frozen II could not even get two stars from me. That's where I thought I would go with it, but by the end I was so annoyed that I busted it down a half-star further to 1.5.

It did look good on the projector though.

Revisionist backlash

What better movie to watch on New Year's Day than one where the clock striking midnight figures prominently into the plot?

Actually, that had no bearing on my decision to rent Cinderella along with Spy when I ran out on New Year's Eve to restock our refrigerator. Neither did the fact that we could watch it with my older son while the younger one was napping, making it a two-birds-with-one-stone affair -- though he ultimately tuned out after about 45 minutes. The real motivations were that a) I could keep the movies for an extra night because of the holiday, and b) I'd been pressing my wife to see it for about a month now, because I'd heard everyone talk about how good it was.

After seeing it, my only conclusion about the strength of the praise is that it's revisionist backlash.

Oh, this is an okay movie. More than okay, maybe. But John Waters' second favorite movie of the year? What?

It seems like people are sick of seeing Disney make its movies overly politically correct, and are happy just to see revisionism kicked to the curb for a change. And Waters has certainly never been a fan of political correctness.

To be sure, I'd heard that this was an old-fashioned, straightforward telling of this familiar fairy tale. However, I didn't expect it to be quite so ... boring. Apparently, this is what people liked about it.

Disney's recent movies have tended to be ... not so boring. Or at least, not so straightforward in their approach to the storytelling. Hits like the much-discussed Tangled and the uber-phenomenon Frozen both show Disney bending over backwards to make sure that the female characters have their own agency, that they do as much prince-saving as being saved by princes, and ultimately that they don't need no man. While those movies are not outright revisionism, you can find an example of outright revisionism only last year, when Disney told Sleeping Beauty from the perspective of its villain, Maleficent. And despite some flaws in the presentation, Maleficent the movie ultimately did some interesting things with its choice to view the title character sympathetically, to make her the victim of male hatred. (At the very least, it was giving us mature stuff that probably went over the heads of its youngest viewers.)

Cinderella is not like that at all. Cinderella is straighter than an arrow. It gives us pretty much exactly the story as we're accustomed to hearing it. Except for the fact that Kenneth Branagh's 2015 version is 27 minutes longer than the 1950 animated version, I would not even be surprised to hear that the story beats are apportioned out at exactly the same time intervals over the course of the narrative.

And this movie was a hit, especially relative to Maleficent, which had a much more tepid critical response (Cinderella's 67 on Metacritic puts it firmly in the green of "generally favorable reviews," while Maleficent's 56 leaves it in the murky orange of "mixed or average reviews").

So is this the artistic equivalent of a politician "getting back to straight talk?" Are audiences so frustrated with all this "liberal mumbo jumbo" that they just want someone who "tells it like it is?" And does "telling it like it is" entail female characters who, while not lacking entirely in agency, are happy enough just to be demure?

Another benefit I noted to the approaches of these other movies, particularly Tangled -- they're a lot more fun. A piece of wisdom I gleaned about Cinderella while seeing it through my son's eyes is just how damn sad the story is. First Ella's mother dies, which I had to explain to him and see how it impacted him. Then after another five minutes or so, her father dies, as another separate, elongated episode. Frozen at least had the decency to kill off both parents in one quick scene, showing nothing more than a ship sinking in the distance. Then of course Ella is subjected to a series of indignities at the hands of her wicked stepsisters and stepmother. By 30 minutes in you wonder if anything happy will ever happen in this movie, and that was about the time when my son said "Daddy, you know I don't like movies where things that happen are sad."

It caused me to think about Tangled, where no characters actually die until the very end, and then it's just the bad guy. That story gets its melancholy from a girl being kidnapped and her parents thinking she's dead, but the whole time we know she's alive and (basically) well inside a tower. Sure, that's kind of the exception as most Disney movies feature at least one dead parent, though usually only one. But the way Cinderella drags these things out and forces kids to focus on them is just kind of perverse.

I said my son checked out around 45 minutes, which was especially interesting because that's just when the magical stuff started to really happen -- the pumpkin turning into a carriage and whatnot. Well, when he came back to the movie later, it was when the prince's father this time was in bed, dying. So if you're keeping track at home, that's three dead parents of characters we like. No wonder my son quickly checked out again.

If your revisionism makes for a more fun movie and also gives the women a little bit of additional responsibility for the outcome of their own lives, by all means, revise these stories all you want.

And go sell your straight talk to somebody else.

Frozen indoctrination: End of Year 1

While Christmas shopping one recent weekend and being beset by "Let It Go" and various department store employees dressed up like Elsa and Anna, I came to a rather startling realization:

Frozen has only been with us for a single year.

This movie has been so entrenched into the very fabric of kid culture that it seems hard to imagine it, but last Christmas season, Frozen wasn't even a full-fledged phenomenon yet. In fact, in Australia, it hadn't even been released yet. Disney's big animated features tend to come out on Boxing Day, as is happening with Big Hero 6 this year.

So this is actually only the first Christmas season in which Frozen merchandise has even been an option for Australian children. I'm sure a small amount of it was bought speculatively last year based on the advanced marketing and some positive buzz from the U.S., but this time last year, Australian children didn't know Frozen (the movie about ice princesses and a plucky snowman) from Frozen (the movie about skiers stranded on a lift and being devoured by wolves).

Now, though, it feels like the images and songs from this movie are as familiar to us as the images and songs from The Little Mermaid ... perhaps the last time there was such an unimaginable furor over something released by Disney.

You could argue that Beauty and the Beast was the greater critical darling and The Lion King the more far-reaching overall phenomenon, but in terms of entrancing little girls, nothing beat The Little Mermaid.

So it is with Frozen. Storywise, Frozen has nothing on Tangled or even Wreck-It Ralph. (I can make these broad statements because it's my blog, and in my world, Tangled is The Greatest Animated Achievement of the Past 20 Years.) But in terms of entrancing little girls, even Disney's first recent movie designed to do that doesn't stand a chance.

Adding to that, it's also a Lion King-sized overall phenomenon. Now you see the secret to Frozen's power.

But Mr. Crankypants -- that's me, the Tangled lover -- still can't see what all the fuss is about. The movie has a couple good songs, sure, but even its undeniably greatest scene -- "Let it Go" -- strikes a person as odd in terms of what the movie is trying to convey in that moment. So wait, which bastards have been getting her down that she has to walk away from? And why is she dressing up in her icy winter ballroom gown and walking a runway? Isn't this supposed to be feminism lite?

I never really got into the characters, and I felt there were whole avenues that ended up as red herrings. (Why is there a whole song devoted to cultivating ice when the movie never spends any time on it otherwise? What purpose do those little ogre people serve?)

The failure to see this film's flaws is what frustrates me so much about the collective Frozen brainwashing of our young people. One of the things that makes Tangled so brilliant is its script. There isn't an ounce of fat in that movie, it's so damn tight. Frozen? It often feels like nothing but fat.

But I suppose what frustrates me the most is the fact that the movie's message is being prized above all else in considering its quality. Tangled made the apparently cardinal sin of having the princess interested in a man. Because Frozen is about a bond between sisters, it is viewed as more progressive and a further step away from the long Disney history of which it is supposed to be deeply ashamed. Maleficent and Brave (Disney via Pixar) both push men to the side as well and are lauded for their "I don't need no man" modern sensibilities.

But these are weak stories, especially Brave. Yes, it's about a mother and daughter. But it's also about a daughter who places a curse on her mother that ends up turning her into a bear. Let's not get so bogged down on the forest that you can't see the trees.

So I feel like the collective narrative has been to celebrate Frozen's focus on a sister-sister relationship, instead of a boy-girl relationship, like the one in Tangled. I count my wife as one of those concerned that Rapunzel doesn't have enough of her own agency in Tangled, since Flynn Rider is ultimately the one who chooses to make a (temporarily) fatal sacrifice for her. He is, therefore, "saving" her. These people forget, though, that Rapunzel tried to issue herself a life sentence of servitude to Mother Gothel to save him, only he flipped the tables on her. He who sacrifices last wins, I guess.

Now I'm really straying from my original point. My original point being that here we are, one year into Frozen's reign as The Greatest Animated Achievement of the Past 20 Years, and the blind adoration accorded this movie leaves me a little uncomfortable. This is a lesser cinematic product being celebrated like a greater one, and that's why I fearlessly refer to the cult-like worship of it as an indoctrination.

Closing on a more positive note, though, I will say that we owe Frozen for one of the funnier moments on our recent trip to the U.S. It was night 2 of the trip and we had just landed in Boston, where we would be picking up a rental car and driving out to my mom's house in Bedford. After we signed the paperwork and headed out to choose from about a half-dozen options (and when did this weird kind of inexactitude become normal practice when renting vehicles?), my son inexplicably ran ahead of us, turned around, and screamed:

"LET IT GO! LET IT GO! DON'T BOTHER ME ANYWAY!"

It was an awesome release that really punctured the stress. We laughed and laughed and continued to mention it for the rest of the trip.

And I kind of love that he got the lyrics wrong in such a funny way.

Take that, Frozen.

That's one kid out there who isn't fully under your spell.

A perfect way to cool off

Now I know why they waited until Boxing Day to release Disney's Frozen here in Australia. Once the heat of summer overtook us, we were going to need some cooling off.

The hottest day of the summer hit Melbourne on Tuesday, when there was a projected high of 43 in the city. Don't speak Celsius? That's 109 degrees.

And we were feeling every damn degree as my three-year-old son and his 72-year-old grandmother and I walked to the tram stop. Actually, in a rather odd phenomenon, it felt like the heat of an oven, and it was also windy. Go figure. "That's Melbourne weather for you," to repeat a phrase I hear someone speak at least once a week.

At least where the tram was taking us promised to provide some relief: Melbourne Central, an upscale mall in downtown Melbourne, which was built around an old so-called "shot factory," whose brick spire still runs up the center of the building (and whose first and second floors are home to businesses in the mall).

Melbourne Central held the Hoyts Cinema where we were going to watch Frozen, reducing our temperatures a few degrees not only from the theater's AC, but from the movie's subject matter.

Yeah, that was the ticket.

I didn't love Frozen like I love Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph, but I'm glad to have seen it, especially on a day like Tuesday, where every snowflake provided an infinitesimal amount of heat relief. And there are a lot of snowflakes in Frozen.

The actual cool and the thematic cool were only one form of "relief" I got while watching this movie. The other was the pleasant surprise of my son's behavior in only his second trip to the theater.

You may remember the first, which I posted about here. He wasn't terrible when we went to see Planes in September, but my wife and I each had to miss five to ten minutes of the movie. Turns out, it wasn't a great movie, so missing a few minutes here and there was no great loss.

The stakes were higher with Frozen, especially since both Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph were in my top five films of their respective years (2010 and 2012). And when the Hoyts pre-show kicked into its 25th minute, I was worried we'd lose him even before the movie started. Frozen is preceded by an imaginative short involving classic Mickey Mouse, which only increased the likelihood that my son would turn into a complete mess before the movie was over.

Complete mess? No. Partial mess? Uh uh. A little bit of a mess? I don't think I could even say that.

Simply put, he floored me. He never got out of his seat to explore any part of the theater, which had been his biggest distraction last time. Only once did he even turn around to look at the people in the rows behind him. At about 30 minutes in, he climbed on my lap from his own seat, but that wasn't the precursor to anything worse. In fact, when I opened up the pack of Pods I'd bought to bribe him, it was a voluntary action on my part -- a reward for good behavior, not a last-ditch attempt to control bad behavior.

He got scared a couple times and commented on the darkness of the theater a couple times, and made a couple exclamations that were a bit too loud. But the rest of the time he talked in whispers, and he was really polite when asking me for more chocolates. He seemed to really respect the sanctity of the theater. Why can't I have this kid living in my house all the time?

What was even cooler was that his grandmother seemed genuinely thrilled by the experience. This was the first modern animated movie she'd seen -- she must have seen some of the Pixar movies, but I don't know which ones -- so she was overwhelmed by the capabilities of modern computer animation. I could only imagine what she must have felt like, sitting there watching it -- I'm guessing it's a bit like seeing your first color movie.

Even when we returned to the waves of suffocating heat outside, our hearts were still frozen, so to speak. (If you've seen the movie, that comment makes sense.)

At home, icy poles (popsicles) were had by all.